During the highly conservative times of 60s and 70s in Chennai, there were only two ways a young woman could travel the world — the first was to be accompanied by her parents and the other was to accompany her husband.
So how is it that Lakshmi Viswanathan found herself living alone in London in her early 20s and travelling the world from Bali to Japan and to NYC? “By nature I was always artistically inclined and luckily I was also blissfully ignorant of what people thought of me,” she reflects with laughter and pride.
“I knew I had a skill and I loved to display it. I looked for and naturally gravitated to other artists. This search took me abroad and luckily for me my parents were very supportive and thought it was great!”
Her search took her on an extraordinary adventure that still continues today. As I sat comfortably in her charming apartment enjoying the sea breeze rolling in from the Bay of Bengal, she began to tell me the stories from some of her travels.
She told me about the first time she experienced a live jazz concert in New York as opposed to playing an LP. The time she took in Michelangelo’s frescos in Florence rather than seeing pictures of them in an encyclopedia. How she danced in an ancient temple in Bali whilst discussing the Ramayana with other dancers and teachers. About how she came to realise through experience that Kyoto was a much more artist-friendly city than Tokyo. What it was like to train with the world-renowned choreographer Mark Morris and to dance in front of Mikhail Baryshnikov.
“At each stage of my life, I discovered new people that I have loved and admired,” she says. “I had a fantastic time attending Queen Mary’s College with my friends. We didn’t study at all and spent almost all our time goofing-off and enjoying the beach and the city around us. But I did get a gold medal in English Literature and now those skills have stayed with me and I have been able to write the books that I have and luckily people seem to now enjoy my style of writing as well as my dancing.”
Her books include a very personal biography of her family friend, the late MS Subbulakshmi and a chronicle of the Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore, Chennai that has now gone into a second print.
Each year for her now culminates in a dance performance that she choreographs and produces for the music and dance season in Chennai. “Everyone has to be a high achiever these days. There is a huge surge in the number of people learning Bharatanatayam and having arangetrams but that does not necessarily improve the quality of the art. There may be a lot of avid dancers out there but that does not make them excellent performance artists. A lot of people may have knowledge about mythology but without poise and grace they can not be career artists,” she reflects on the dance scene today.
